I've heard many people say that battleships were useless

>I've heard many people say that battleships were useless

Dumb people, maybe. Battleships were extremely effective, it's just that their role was more limited than in previous wars.

>but WHY were they useless?

The improvement in plane technology made them increasingly vulnerable to air attack. There are only so many AA guns you can stick on a ship, and given how many planes you can build for the cost of one battleship it's just not cost effective.

>>2749507

They weren't useless. They just got overshadowed by aircraft and submarines. In WW1, fleets were centered around battleships. In WW2, fleets were centered around aircraft carriers, and battleships got relegated to escort roles. On top of that, there weren't many battleship vs. battleship fights during WW2 or WW1. Despite the fact that battleship vs. battleship was at the heart of naval doctrine for the time, nations were rarely willing to risk their prized battleship armadas unless absolutely necessary.

>>2749507
They weren't completely useless, but they weren't that great either.

You had two main forms of naval combat in WW2, commerce raiding, often by submarines or smaller ships, in which BB were too big, slow, expensive, and valuable to waste on long term raids like that, and major, major fleet confrontation, where naval air turned out to be the primary striking arm, not the big guns of battleships.

That being said, it was a VERY rare occurrence, especially in the Pacific, for carriers to stray too far from the protective guns of their BB escorts.

>>2749507
>WHY were they useless?

Out-ranged by aircraft carriers.

The mission of a battleship is to assert control of the sea and provide indirect fire support for shore targets.

Both of these tasks could be done more effectively and efficiently with an aircraft carrier.

File: SInk the Bismark.png (68KB, 314x592px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2749507
They're not useless and WWII still shitloads of surface 2 surface combat, and battleships were still a force to be reckoned with in many such battles.

>>2749651
>1 ship sunk
>2000+ dead
These are very large boats

>>2749784
A warship is not a boat.

>>2749784
well, shitloads of things make a battleship work. They're unlike modern superliners where something as big as a WWII battleship is crewed by 20 cunts and everything is automated.

>>2749507
They were useful in the Gulf War though.

Because aircraft could sink them easily

>>2749507

Because the aircraft carrier can godmode from 150 miles away with unlimited ammo

>>2749920
Not really.

Naval gunfire was far inferior to the smart bombs we had in the inventory at the time.

>>2749958
Smart bombs didn't make the coastal fort defenders surrender just from the threat of bombardment. 16-inch naval guns did that.

>>2749507
Obsolete, OP. Not useless. Two different things.

When the IJN ran out of pilots, their aircraft carriers were useless. So they used BBs as their main remaining striking power.

>>2749994
The Iraqi's surrendered to media teams, dude, so a destroyer probably could have done the same.

>>2750085
Can you blame them? I'd surrender to the first white person I saw, too, if I'd just been given a taste of Verdun.

>>2749507
Step 1: build aircraft carrier

Step 2: Zergrush big, slow battleship with torpedo- and divebombers

Step 3: No more big, slow easy target of a battleship

The naval war in the pacific was all abour aircraft carriers. Others ships were basically only there to support them.

>>2749784
For Reich

>>2749531
True but they were also very useful to transport planes themselves in the pacific

File: Naval Battle of Guadalcanal.png (211KB, 578x1148px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2749651
Uhh, could Sink the Bismarck really count as a good example of surface to surface combat? Considering that it was a carrier that disabled her, and then a bunch of Royal Navy ships pounced on a crippled ship because of that.

>>2750510
I think the point was that even a wounded battleship still needed a fuckton of enemy ships to be forced to scuttle.

>>2749507
they weren't useless but they were completely outdated by doctrine ni which they referred to aircraft carriers to serve the main role as the most efficient power projection machine ever built.

Something many people seem to disregard is that during ww2 carriers could not operate at night or in bad weather, so battleships still had their times when they were unrivaled.

>>2749507
Because aircraft carriers existed.

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>>2750545
>during ww2 carriers could not operate at night or in bad weather
>laughing_royal_navy.png

>>2749507
>bb/cc strike distance 40kms max
>cv strike distance 100s of kms

>>2750510
>one of your rerated battlecruisers gets fatally crippled by fucking treaty cruisers

Pretty embarrassing desu.